


[META] But Thinking Makes It So: A Meta-Textual Analysis of Hamlet as Lucifer or Which Parts of Hamlet Did Lucifer Actually "Punch Up"?

by TheYahwehDance



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Hamlet - Freeform, Kierkegaard shows up, Linda is everything, Line by line analysis, Lucifer wrote Hamlet, Meta, Nonfiction, Other, Plato too, Seriously this is a line by line analysis of Hamlet as though it were written by Lucifer, Shakespeare Quotations, So does Montaigne, Someone teach this man to archive his documents, This is not scholarship, You've been warned, hyperfixation in action, really this has gotten out of hand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 15:05:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18195767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYahwehDance/pseuds/TheYahwehDance
Summary: Hamlet. Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy and one of his most popular works. But why did Lucifer “punch-up” this play in particular? In the Sandman, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream is inspired by the title character and The Tempest is referenced throughout the DC Presence universe, so why use a dynastic tragedy about familial betrayal, pirates, and depression?I’m so glad you asked. Please step into my office for a 3500 word meta-textual analysis of which parts, exactly, Lucifer added to Hamlet and how the story’s themes reflect the themes of the show and Lucifer’s life.





	[META] But Thinking Makes It So: A Meta-Textual Analysis of Hamlet as Lucifer or Which Parts of Hamlet Did Lucifer Actually "Punch Up"?

**Author's Note:**

> I’m assuming a working knowledge of Hamlet and using a basic high school level analysis of the text. If you don’t know the play or haven’t read it in a while, Branagh’s 1996 film is excellent and I have a soft spot for Almereyda’s 2000 adaptation staring Ethan Hawke. Both are true to the text and themes. 
> 
> All bolds are mine.

In 3x06 Vegas with Some Radish there is this quick throw away joke where Linda rummages through Lucifer’s bookcase and pulls out an original, handwritten copy of Hamlet with a note “Thanks for the Punch Up - Will” in the corner. And of course, it’s Linda, the light of my life, the only person who appears to have read a book or have any ounce of common sense in this show, so she quickly hides it away because HOLY SHIT LUCIFER PUT THAT IN A CLIMATE CONTROLED BOX WITH UV PROTECTION! What are you thinking?! This is a priceless document and you just HAVE IT IN YOUR BOOKCASE. A book case you throw people into!? Oh my god someone, please, help this man. How has he even kept this document for so long!?

Anyway, now that _that_ is out of the way: Hamlet. Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy and one of his most popular works. But why did Lucifer “punch-up” this play in particular? In the Sandman, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream is inspired by the title character and The Tempest is referenced throughout the DC Presence universe, so why use an unrelated dynastic tragedy about familial betrayal, pirates, and depression?

I’m so glad you asked. Please step into my office for a 4000 word meta-textual analysis of which parts, exactly, Lucifer added to Hamlet and how the story’s themes reflect the themes of the show and Lucifer’s life.  

(I’m not suggesting Satan himself helped Shakespeare nor that the show did a textual analysis of Early Modern plays and decided that Hamlet fit better than The Tempest or Dr. Faustus (though, if they did, can I see the notes?). All I’m says is that if the showrunners didn’t want this, they should have stuck with Midsummer’s Night Dream.)

So, without further ado, let’s dive in:

Act III, Scene IV: Queen Gertrude   
  
Queen Gertrude. She’s no Lady Macbeth filled with agency and plans but she is no tragic wilting female either. In the classic interpretation of the text, her crime is complicity: She watches with inaction as her lover kills her husband, she watches as her son dissolves with grief, and she acts as though she is invested in Hamlet’s well-being (and, depending on the actor, it might be genuine concern or faked) but she does not acknowledge her role in his depression. Only in the end, when it’s too late, does she sacrifice herself for her son in vain. From Hamlet’s confrontation with his mother:

HAMLET: … **Have you eyes?**  
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,  
And batten on this moor? **Ha! have you eyes**

From 2x01 we know that Lucifer’s main resentment towards his Mother is that she just watched as he fell, “She just stood there and let it happen”. Both the Goddess and Gertrude are in positions of power and have, relative to others, more agency than they choose to use. When Hamlet says to his mother, “Have you eyes?” it is also Lucifer asking how a mother could watch something so horrific as the fall and not see the abuse. If this is the case, the wish fulfillment of a mother recognizing her fault and choosing self-sacrifice as penance is all the more tragic – Hamlet achieves some level of reconciliation, Lucifer is given none.

This is, of course, assuming that the Goddess/Gertrude knew what was happening. There is evidence to suggest that Gertrude was unaware of the murder itself, but again: Have you eyes? Her husband died suddenly, conveniently, and she blinds herself to the truth for her own ends. A parallel is when Goddess _says_ she saved Lucifer by condemning him to fall, but she had to know his fall was no salvation and couldn’t be. She has blinded herself to the truth of her inaction. At the moment of this play, in 1602, Lucifer doesn’t know this about his mother, only that that she watched him fall in silence. He only knows her as complicit in his downfall.

Then, in the same speech:

HAMLET: **But it reserved some quantity of choice,**  
**To serve in such a difference.** What devil was't  
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?  
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,  
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,  
Or but a sickly part of one true sense  
Could not so mope.  
  
Now we could do a line by line reading but the gist is this: She had a choice. Both Gertrude and the Goddess have something that Lucifer lacks, free will. Aside from the crime itself, they chose to ignore their son’s pain, choose to look away: Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight. And that is the worse crime because there was some expectation, whether societal or innate, for the mother to nurture, to obey her nature and care for her son, and they both deny that part of themselves. They choose to pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn’t, they choose to ignore their own agency, choose to ignore that inaction is a type of action in and of itself.

HAMLET:  **O shame! where is thy blush?** Rebellious hell,  
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,  
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,  
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame  
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,  
Since frost itself as actively doth burn  
**And reason panders will.**

And, ultimately, until confronted by their tacit criminality, they do not regret it. Regret, the concept of shame, is crucial to our understanding of Hell in the show and without it both mothers suggest that the means (the Fall, the murder) justify the ends (a King in Hell, a lover on the throne). Hamlet mocks his mother and sarcastically says that no one can fault acting on desire, the ‘reason’ of desire gives in to the choice of ‘will’. It’s an attack on her status, age, and gender which should be above such follies as romantic desire.

And this, in turn, toys on what we know of how Lucifer uses desire. If someone wants to indulge and they have the ability to, why _not_ let reason pander to will? His entire existence, it could be argued, is to entice reason to will. Ironic then, it is exactly that which Hamlet identifies as Gertrude’s true fault, her desire and her sexuality.

 

\--------

 

Act I, Scene II: The Ghost 

A defining feature of the play is how it toys with the question of the natural vs the supernatural, not in a riot of world building (see: The Tempest, Midsummer’s Night) but with subtlety. The plot teases the supernatural, forcing the audience and characters alike to question the nature of what they are seeing. To see the Ghost as a hallucination is just as valid as to see the Ghost as a reality. This is a concept raised in the show frequently; our reality is not concrete and a man who is shot but not harmed can be both real and unreal. Most of the characters choose to believe one or the other, Chloe is unique in that she chooses to live with both: She needs the eggs.

The primary force of the supernatural is Hell. In the play, Hell is not a location so much as a force of will, exerting pressure and having agency on its own accord. The Ghost of Hamlet’s father is in Hell and has left Hell for the sake of revenge, but whether he chooses to leave or Hell decided to precipitate events of its own accord is left to the reader:

HAMLET: If it assume my noble father's person,  
I'll speak to it, **though hell itself should gape**  
And bid me hold my peace.  
  
HAMLET: **Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,**  
**To cast thee up again.** What may this mean,  
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel  
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon…

It’s also notable that Hamlet is the only character who brings up the concept of Hell with any frequency. The other characters who say the word only use it in reference to him, as if Hamlet and Hell are uniquely linked. Hamlet alone can speak with the Ghost and so he alone is left ponder the existential crisis of knowing the Afterlife. It is a symbol of his isolation from the society. He is alone with his knowledge as much as he is alone in his pain. Remind you of anyone? It’s a pretty damned direct parallel to our friendly neighborhood devil.

Furthermore, Hamlet’s direct attempts at explaining his reality (Hell, Depression, the Ghost, the truth of the murder) are treated as insanity by those around him so he resorts to metaphors and half truths. He exists between the real world and the spiritual world. Just as the more Lucifer insists he is the Devil, the more insane he appears. Allowing people to think he is ‘making it up’ is a way for him to exist in the liminal space between the real and the unreal without explicit proof.  
  
HAMLET: Making night hideous; and **we fools of nature**  
**So horridly to shake our disposition**  
**With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?**  
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?

From the same scene, this line reading is usually interpreted as the moment that Hamlet’s madness takes root. For a natural being to consider reality beyond the earthly plane is enough to drive one to madness. This is a point often brought up in the show, humans cannot handle the divine. But consider this as well: An angel, servant to God’s will, can also ‘shake their disposition’ with thoughts beyond their reach and suffer for it in equal measure. And if that angel is reaching for freedom from servitude? Well then, what will become of _that_ broken creature?

Finally, the Ghost describes Hell. While the Ghost references fire and implies he will ascend once his sins are absolved, there are few specifics of the actual experience of Hell. Like a good horror movie, he scares the reader more by describing nothing, alluding to fear and torment without detail:

GHOST: And for the day **confined to fast in fires** ,  
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature  
Are burnt and purged away. But that **I am forbid**  
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,  
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word  
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,  
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,  
Thy knotted and combined locks to part  
And each particular hair to stand on end,  
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:  
But this eternal blazon **must not be**  
**To ears of flesh and blood.** List, list, O, list!

It's a terrifying speech but when you read through it the only detail we get is that he is “confined to fast in fires”. The point is to convince the reader that the Ghost is truly in Hell and this does a damn fine job of it. The Ghost also drives home the point that humans are unable to handle the divine it “must not be/to ears of flesh and blood”, further linking Hamlet and Hell and separating him from his reality.

 

 --------

 

Act II, Scene II: Rozencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet:

Okay, so this is where I think Lucifer did most of the work. This whole scene stands out in the play – it’s not plot driven, it’s not vital to understand motivations, it’s got two bit characters and could easily be cut but it so rarely is because, more than anything, it's fun.

The entire exchange is basically friends sitting around, engaging in a little metaphysical word play. There are deeper interpretations, it's often seen as the moment Hamlet knows he’s being watched, but for now let’s take a surface approach. It can be played for laughs with R+G as the fools and sometimes it's played for atmosphere, placing relationships in context. In one notable instance, it’s placed for the postmodern existential crisis it appears to be (Stoppard’s R & G Are Dead).  But no matter how the scene is played, it’s a snappy little bit of dialogue work that contains some of the most memorable lines in the play. Line by line analysis to follow, but first, in full:

HAMLET: My excellent good friends! How dost thou,  
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ: **As the indifferent children of the earth.**

GUILDENSTERN: Happy, in that we are not over-happy;  
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET: Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ: Neither, my lord.

HAMLET: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of  
her favours?

GUILDENSTERN: 'Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET: In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she  
is a strumpet. What's the news?

ROSENCRANTZ: **None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest**.

HAMLET: **Then is doomsday near** : but your news is not true.  
Let me question more in particular: what have you,  
my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,  
that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN: Prison, my lord!

HAMLET: Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.

HAMLET: A goodly one; in which there are many confines,  
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET: Why, then, 'tis none to you; **for there is nothing**  
**either good or bad, but thinking makes it so** : to me  
it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Why then, **your ambition makes it one; 'tis too  
narrow for your mind.**

HAMLET: O God, **I could be bounded in a nut shell and count**  
**myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I**  
**have bad dreams.**

GUILDENSTERN: Which **dreams indeed are ambition** , for the very  
substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET: A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a  
quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

HAMLET: **Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and**  
**outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows.** Shall we  
to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

Oh My. So much to unpack here. First off though, doesn’t this sound like something our favorite Devil would just _love?_ I mean, you’ve got a sex joke, a comment on the nature of ambition, a discussion of the MAIN THEME OF HOW HEAVEN AND HELL WORKS, and some weird word play about shadows and dreams. It’s perfectly Lucifer in every way. And that should be enough to convince you, but I know you are all freaky little nerds and want a line by line analysis:

So let’s start at the top. Hamlet greets his friends and the very first thing they say to him in return: **As the indifferent children of the earth.** This is usually taken to mean “as good as anyone else” but it has a secondary meaning as well if we assume that the Devil himself wrote these lines (we are, in case you’re still wondering). It is a sly comment that humans are not enjoying the novelty of their free will as they should, instead they are as indifferent towards it as they are towards their own existence.

Then comes the Fortunes Cap exchange and well, it’s pretty clear, but in case you missed it: No one is suffering nor exalting, rather they are in the middle, which is to say, Fortune is fucking them over. Better put, fortune favors those who pay her for their good luck and she is fickle in her affections. Not directly related to anything, but a nice little exchange and very up Lucifer’s alley: sexual innuendo with puns.

 **The world's grown honest/Then doomsday is near**. Two things. One, Hamlet is actually a pretty playful character. He uses sarcasm, word play, and double meanings often. It’s even alluded that his new dark mood is so noteworthy because he was so upbeat before his father’s death. Does that bring up any parallels?

Second, when we meet him in S1 Lucifer does not have a high opinion of humanity in general. He likes some humans and he likes playing with them, but in the way a cat likes playing with their food. He believes most, if not all, are lying pretty much constantly. They don’t have any obligation to tell the truth, so they don’t. But lies compound and lead to shame. If shame ceased to exist people would stop going to Hell and that would put the Devil out of a job, hence doomsday.

 **for there is nothing/either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.** When Hamlet appeared on screen in 3x06, I gasped. _Because this is it._ This is the entire thesis of this damned show. Here, in Act II, Scene II of Hamlet. Nothing is Good, nothing is Bad, but our base need to categorize them as such seals our fate. Consider Celestials: Lucifer is neither good nor bad, but when he _thinks_ he’s one or the other, his physical appearance changes to accommodate his thoughts. Or consider humanity: When someone _thinks_ they have done wrong, they go to Hell, when they _think_ they have lived to their best ability they go to Heaven. We create our own reality.

Does this have some really disturbing consequences? You bet. The basic concept of the authentic self and self expression is constructed by our surroundings, i.e. Society. As our society changes, the way we _think_ about the construction of our essential selves changes dramatically and the shame we feel reflects that. We can never be our true selves because of society’s external pressure so, like quantum particles, we are in a constant state of observation.

For Kierkegaard, this goes so far as to affect our spiritual nature. Our relationship with God is essentially flawed because if we act ‘good’ to please Him, our essential motivation is unsound and so are we. The only way to bypass this is to act good because our values align with God’s values. But God’s values change depending on whose interpreting them, so you can’t know if your relationship with the divine is valid. The show treats this as a positive revelation, that we have control over our fate. However without a state of societal _tabula rasa_ , our control is ceded to the time and place in which we live and how well we conform to that society, rather than how well we conform to our true self. Hamlet's actions, for example, do not align with society and, even though he is being true to himself, he expresses shame and regret that he cannot conform. It's a central conflict of the character. 

This also relates to how Chloe sees Lucifer – she thinks he’s good. She doesn’t always have a lot to go on but she is steadfast in her _thinking_ (it’s logic, not belief) and her expectations reflect back on him. Thus his self esteem is adjusted by his surroundings, in this case a single person. Our self-worth is determined by the society we keep and the society we live in as much as it comes from within, however much Linda and Maze would like to suggest otherwise.

*And before you start on the whole “Shakespeare wasn’t an existentialist philosopher” rant, I know.  This line is from a contemporary French philosopher/essayist Montaigne who said “That the taste of Goods or Evils doth greatly depend on the opinion we have of them”. This is, in turn, a well established tenant of Pyrrhonist philosophy from the 4th century B.C. that was having a moment in the 1590s A.D. It’s basically a 16th century meme.*

 **king of infinite space**. So the usual textual analysis of this is, again, joking metaphors between friends. Basically: You’re too ambitious for such a small country/ on the contrary, I could be anywhere and I would still be unhappy. And this works for both the characters and our Lucifer. If he’s not going to have what he wants he would be unhappy in any context, whether in Heaven or in Hell.

But let’s look back at it. With a literal interpretation: Hamlet/Lucifer is asserting some kind of quantum space/time where the smallest space is also the most infinite. This is _way_ beyond Shakespeare understanding but would fit with what we (don’t) know about anything celestial, namely wings and time in Hell. Then, in a well established textual interpretation, layered metaphors indicate a damaged emotional state: I wish I could be in control (‘King’) of my own mind (‘space’) again but what I have experienced (‘bad dreams’) prevents me. It works well for Hamlet but it also works well for what we know of Lucifer’s state of mind. 

And finally, **monarchs and/outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows**. Going back and forth, they come to the conclusion that ambition is more intangible than both dreams and shadows, since both of those can be recognized. Ambition is only a shadow’s shadow, nothingness. Thus those with ambition, Kings, are insubstantial while those without, beggars, are the only physical beings. Anyone want to yell about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with me?

If Lucifer wrote this (he did), then perhaps he is considering the nature of his rebellion: A King in Hell, yes, but his ambition made him a shadow of his former self and a human beggar has a greater chance of entering the silver city than he ever will. It’s a sobering note to end on, that to grasp “beyond the reaches of our souls”, will leave you worse off. Is it better to try and fail or never attempt to at all? I believe that the play is undecided on that front. In one sense Hamlet’s rash actions and vengeful thinking leave a trail of bodies in his wake and result in his own death. On the other hand, he cleanses Denmark of its corruption, leaving King Fortinbras a fresh kingdom free from dynastic struggle and the threat of imminent war. It's an extreme version of unintentional self sacrifice, but by the close Hamlet is content, in his dying breath he absolves himself of guilt. Can Lucifer claim as much? Is Heaven better for his absence? Is he? 

Our dear Lucifer, if he added anything to Hamlet, wrote this scene. It’s the exact definition of a ‘punch up’, it relates to what we know of his life and his state of mind, and it’s a pun filled piece of dialogue work where double meanings abound.

\---

So there it is. Your textual analysis of why Hamlet is the _perfect_ play to use to illustrate Lucifer’s life. The themes of Hamlet, especially the questions of maternal responsibility, the real vs the unreal, and how our thinking shapes our conception of good and evil, are directly related to the themes of the show. Either someone in the writer’s room really knows their Shakespeare or they got really lucky. I could go into this further (really, don’t tempt my reason to will) but suffice to say, someone, please, for the love of God, get that handsome Devil a book on archival maintenance. My poor heart can’t take seeing another priceless document thrown about with such abandon.


End file.
